Breathing Underwater
by FireOnHigh
Summary: Sequel to 'By Your Side'. Promises, after all, are made to be broken. Lives are meant to end. Everyone in the business dies young; have you ever heard of Hunter who retired, left the life? Rated T for self-harm and a bit of language. (Revised)


Author's Note: This is a companion piece to _By Your Side_, one of my other Supernatural fics. It answers the other half of the prompt: What if Castiel found out about your self-harm scars? I suppose that you might want to read it first, though it is up to you, my lovely reader. Not tagged to any season, nor are there any spoilers. Lastly, I do not own Supernatural. Please leave a review when you finish reading, so I know what I did good or need to work on.

Trigger Warnings: Self-harm/Cutting, Suicidal thoughts

X~x~X

"_Promise us you won't hurt yourself anymore."_

"_I promise," I replied wholeheartedly, smiling at the brothers who had helped me turn my life around, made me realize that the answer to my problems did not lie in the blade of a knife or a razor's edge._

_Dean wrapped me in a tight hug. "I expect you to keep that promise, kid. Do y'understand?"_

"_Yeah, of course." When he pulled away, he put a slip of paper in my hands. Unfolding it, I saw a list of several hastily scrawled numbers on the crumpled note._

"_Call us anytime, no matter how late."_

"_Or call Bobby if you can't get a hold of us," Sam added seriously. "And if you feel the urge to cut again or just need someone to talk to…"_

"_I know, I know. Give you a call," I interrupted, rolling my eyes. "I remember." My vision was strangely blurry, tears trying to escape my eyes. "Thanks for everything." _

The rest of the memory dissolved into muddled images of Sam hugging me, and both of the Winchesters walking to me to my vehicle, a very beat up 1987 Ford Bronco that my dad gave to me when I first started Hunting solo. The hotel's dusk-to-dawn light had highlighted the spots of rust at the fenders and on the passenger door. The outline of our shadows, my shorter one bracketed between the freakishly tall brothers, was cast on the worn asphalt.

I laughed a little, a dry, hacking and above all utterly humourless sound that emphasized how drunk I was. My hand was halfway to the nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the rim of the bathtub when my phone began to buzz angrily. "Why can't you just leave me the fuck alone?" I demanded. I assumed it was my mother; the screen was too fuzzy for me to make out who actually was was calling. "Wha'y'want, Mother?" I snapped.

"I'm not your mom, ya idjit! Why didn't ya answer me the last coupla times I called you?"

"Bobby…" I sighed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothin'. Jus' wanted to check in with ya," the older Hunter drawled, sounding uncharacteristically gentle, controlled, even.

"I'm fine." Lie. Add another piece of guilt to the stack that was crushing me. "If that's all…"

He lost his calm all at once. "You aren't fine! I heard about your dad, kid, and I know you aren't fine!"

I drew my knees to my chest, the now-cold bathwater swirling around my limbs. A tiny choked sob burst from between my lips and I almost let the phone fall from my hand. The knife, _Dad's _knife, slid from my thighs and sunk to the bottom of the porcelain tub with a thin ringing peal.

"I'm sending the boys your way."

"No. No, no, no, no." I couldn't deal with seeing them. They would take one look at me and see how far I had fallen, how I'd let them down. That I broke the promise I made to them. "I'm handling it, Bobby. I promise." I lunged toward the edge of the tub, grabbed the bottle and took a quick, steadying swig, then another, and a third, until I finished it, trying desperately to renew the empty feeling in my heart. Anything to drown out the pain. Anything to make me forget that my father is gone.

"Your daddy's dead, kid! This isn't just something you can just get over!"

"Like I don't fuckin' know that!" I was screaming now, crying freely for the first time since I'd gotten the call. "My mother called me and told me that he had died the day before, that he's been in a fucking hospital for the last coupla days. No one bothered to call me! And now he's dead and he's already cremated. I didn't even get to say goodbye, Bobby!"

My voice dwindled down to a harsh, strangled whisper. And I remembered the phone call, everything my mother had said to me, all the words I had tried to drown in alcohol and with the sharpened edge of a knife.

_A dark and dank hotel room, the kind that eventually becomes a kind of home for Hunters, was my current residence. I'd just finished up a Hunt, taken out a pair of vamps who'd been terrorizing the town of Bethany, Missouri, and I was researching for my next job when my phone rang. Number withheld. I shrugged; it was probably the Winchesters with a job offer._

"_Hello?"_

"_Oh, thank God I finally got the right number. Do you know how many goddamn people I had to go through to get a hold of you?"_

"_Mother?"_

_She snorted loudly. "Of course. I'm surprised that you recognize my voice. After all, we haven't talked in months."_

"_Almost two years," I corrected automatically. "What do you need?"_

"_Do I have to need anything to talk to my daughter?" her voice took on a slightly wheedling tone that I normally associated with children._

"_We never just talk."_

"_Fine. I'll get down to business. Your father...he just...he passed away."_

_My heart flatlined, and I don't know if it ever restarted. "Wh…what? No!"_

_Her tone softened slightly. "I'm sorry, dear. He got sick last week, after one of those silly business trips of his and…"_

"_And you're just telling me now?" Sluggishly, my mind tried to wrap itself around the concept of life without my father, the one who taught me to fight and Hunt and drive. Who'd been the one constant in my life. He'd been there after the divorce, after my first heartbreak, after my first Hunt, when I'd frozen and nearly gotten both of us killed. _

"_Don't be so ungrateful! I couldn't call you because I didn't have your number. I had to search through your father's things to find it, and you can imagine how well that went with his wife."_

"_The funeral…" I coughed, struggling to speak around the lump in my throat. "When's the funeral?"_

"_Services are set to take place on Wednesday. His wife made all the plans, and didn't even consult me once. I mean, she had the body burned before he was barely even cold. She's crazy. Certifiably insane, if you ask me." My mother kept rattling on, some nonsense about the character of my stepmother. I let the phone fall out of my hand onto the desk._

_Numbness consumed me. "He's dead. He's dead. He's really dead," I repeated until the words lost all meaning, and still I kept saying them. "He's dead, he's gone." I missed his Hunter's burial, the burning of his body, the scattering of his ashes to the four winds. "Daddy…"_

"Daddy…Please…" The knife was back in my hand, and I was absently sketching lines on the untanned skin of my legs with the sharpened point of the runed blade. Blood leaked out of the shallow wounds, staining the chilled water pale pink. I began to shiver, my whole body quaking as I let the pain roll over me, trying to at least match the pain in my heart if I couldn't drown it out. It wasn't enough, though. It was never enough.

"The hell are you doing, kid? Don't tell me that you're alone right now." Bobby waited a handful of heartbeats before going on. "I'm gonna send Sam and Dean your way, y'hear? Where are you stayin'?"

My knife hand trembled, driving the point deeper into my flesh. I exhaled, air hissing between my teeth as I carefully withdrew the blade. A thin ribbon of red unfurled from beneath my skin, drifting slowly and reddening the water further. I watched closely, fascinated. "Beautiful," I mused under my breath. "That's my life. That's it. Unravelling slowly at first and now…now…"

"What are you doing?" Bobby demanded. "_Where are you_?"

I hung up, cut off the voice of the man I saw as an uncle of sorts, the archetypal gruff family member who seemed like a hard case but had a soft heard inside of his calloused exterior. The phone was out of my hands before I had time to think, clattering to the dirty tiled floor. I raised my left arm out of the water and assessed the crosshatched scars and newer wounds.

I had fallen off the wagon barely twenty four hours after I found out about Dad. Gone straight off the reservation without a second thought. But it's still not enough.

I tried at first to remember the good times. Me and Dad planning Hunts, eating at homey diners scattered across the United States, exchanging presents for Christmas. Yet they all brought me back to the same place: my Daddy being dead. I won't be able to hug him, tell him I love him one last time. I never even had a chance to _say goodbye, _for God's sake.

That's what inspired me to begin adding to the map of sorrow on my arms, the physical representation of my shattered soul drawn onto my skin. Humans' hearts are only meant to handle so much before breaking irreparably, and I think mine crossed that point when my mother called me.

Teeth gritted in preparation for the pain I was sure to feel, I set the edge to my forearm and began to carve. Instantly my thoughts blurred together, mingling into a single cry of PAINPAINPAINPAIN. It was almost a form of bliss, shorting out my mind and cauterizing the torn edges of my heart.

I couldn't stop. Every time I paused to catch my breath, to reposition the knife, I remembered. My father's face flashed in front of my eyes. By the time I'd switched arms, my left hand was barely able to grip the handle of my blade, _Daddy's_ blade. "Don't be angry. Please…I'm just not strong like you. I'm sorry…" The wounds were becoming more ragged and deeper as I progressed, the water in the tub more red than pink.

The world began to grey slowly around the edges of my vision, my handiwork taking its toll on my body. Panic hit, and fear too, but only for a couple of heartbeats. I'd gone too far. Too far to go back…too far to care whether or not I lived or died.

The edge of the tub seemed so far way. I could barely get my thoughts together to form a sentence, let alone a fully coherent goodbye speech. I was going to see my Daddy and that was all that mattered. A note…I should leave a note… A loud ringing in my ears distracted me for a moment and then my phone began to buzz. But I was already too far gone to care; the bathroom faded to pale grey then white and then nothing. No pain, no sadness. Just nothing. Oblivion at last.

X~x~X

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the cracked and water-stained ceiling of my hotel room. Not exactly what I'd been expecting to see after I died. "Dad?" I asked, nearly choking on the word. He had to be here, if this was heaven.

"I am not your father."

Wordlessly, I gasped and sat up, reaching for a weapon, any weapon. My hands closed on a pillow, the knife I'd hidden under it was gone. A man in a pale tan trenchcoat, blue tie, and business dress was sitting at the foot of my bed, watching me with wide blue eyes. "Who…?"

"My name is Castiel and I am an Angel of the Lord." He stood slowly, being careful to avoid making sudden movements. "I took the liberty of healing your wounds."

"Uh…thanks." I looked down at my arms that rested on top of the covers, peered under the blankets at my legs. Nothing. Only the faded marks of my oldest scars.

"Why did you do this to yourself?" the Angel asked seriously, tilting his head slightly to one side.

"Why are you here?" I countered.

He smiled slightly. "Dean asked me to check on you. When I discovered you were in peril, I stepped in to assist you."

"Yeah, thanks for that." I pulled the covers up to my chin and let the silence settle between us. This angel, Castiel, continued to stare at me, until I demanded," What?"

"You never answered my question. Why did you take the knife to your own arms?"

I wanted to say _it's none of your business. It's private and I don't need to tell you_, but what came out was," My dad just died. He's all I had, he brought me into this life and he's the only person who's always been here for me. I loved him and he's gone. I never had a chance to say goodbye…" My voice trailed off in a thin wail; I couldn't handle the pity in the angel's inhumanly bright eyes as he watched me.

Castiel walked slowly to stand beside me. "Rest now. Dean and Sam will be here in the morning and they will help you." Gently, almost reverently, he placed his fingers on my forehead and my eyes shut almost instantly, the sweet release of sleep claiming me.

I dreamed of my father, of all the good memories we had shared. And as the dream ended, I remembered to say goodbye. I told him that I love him and I'll never forget him. That I'm going to be strong and live for him.

X~x~X

Final note: Thanks for dropping by and reading my story! Feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think: was my story good, bad, or just meh? Any suggestions for changes I could make or grammar errors you noticed? I'm thinking of adding a second chapter for when Dean and Sam show up; would you like to see that? Thanks again, and have a fantastic day, friend!


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